


Maybe if Things Were Different

by extrasourwolf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 09:57:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extrasourwolf/pseuds/extrasourwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s honest. It’s always honest. Boyd doesn’t hide from her, not after she’s seen him nearly bleed out and heard him sob and scream from the electricity raging through his body. After the first week, there’s something there that wasn’t before, and it feels a little like love. Boyd once read that out of the ashes, a new beginning is born. He vaguely wonders what those ashes used to be. Maybe if things were different, he wouldn’t wonder at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe if Things Were Different

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place right after season 2, and goes a bit into what I figure would be season 3. A thousand thanks to [Isabelle](http://brokenhalelujah.tumblr.com/) for reading over this for me <3

The alpha pack lets them go, and Boyd finds himself more scared of that than the claws they danced along his skin and the teeth they flashed with Cheshire smiles. Erica just runs, and she doesn’t stop until Boyd calls out to her to just  _stop, wait a damn second_. Erica looks at him like she forgot he was there, and goes back to his side apologetically. Later, when they find a motel in some dingy town some miles away from Beacon Hills, she tells him she never forgot he was there; she just forgot that he was still hurt, that maybe he’s not as indestructible as he seemed. Boyd shrugs and doesn’t say anything. Tired, they curl up together and disregard the extra space on the bed in exchange for keeping as close as possible. 

Erica wakes up first, and she sits by the window, looking at something Boyd can’t see. He finds her like that every morning for the next two weeks. He doesn’t ask her what time she wakes up, or why she looks out at the highway littered with trash and leaves. Instead, he asks her what she wants for breakfast. It’s domestic in all the ways that should feel wrong, out of place, but don’t. Maybe if things were different, the domesticity would be appropriate. 

Boyd does the cooking, which is really just going out somewhere inconspicuous and getting food. Sometimes, he’ll go to a grocery store and get something he has to put together himself, just for the sake of  _doing_  something. The motel they stay in doesn’t have much in way of a kitchen, but it’s enough. It’s always enough, as long as they’re together. Erica brings home (he can’t recall when they started calling it that, but it was somewhere between Erica’s breakdown and Boyd’s destruction of a desk lamp) some cash, just enough to get by. He doesn’t ask, he never does, but he knows it makes her feel ashamed and guilty. Boyd doesn’t push her, and she pushes him just enough. 

Erica never flirts with him, nor does she bat her eyelashes at him. It’s honest. It’s always honest. Boyd doesn’t hide from her, not after she’s seen him nearly bleed out and heard him sob and scream from the electricity raging through his body. After the first week, there’s something there that wasn’t before, and it feels a little like love. Boyd once read that out of the ashes, a new beginning is born. He vaguely wonders what those ashes used to be. Maybe if things were different, he wouldn’t wonder at all.

They open up to each other, piece by piece. They tell each other things that they originally wouldn’t have, and Boyd feels like it’s because if they don’t do it now, they may never get a chance to. No one wants to leave this place without feeling like someone, at least one person, knew him or her in a way no one else did.

Boyd tells her about his mother, how she left him with his grandmother because she couldn’t handle a child and only came around when she needed something, leaving nothing but disaster in her wake like a hurricane. Erica tells him about her desire to be powerful and her need to have control after not having any of either for so long. She tells him where the money comes from and how she feels like shit for lying and taking what she shouldn’t, and he doesn’t judge her in the slightest. Eventually, they tell each other what they would be doing if they hadn’t accepted the bite, and what they would’ve done if Gerard never became such a menacing factor in their lives. Erica would’ve become a cop. Boyd would’ve become a carpenter. Maybe if things were different, Boyd thinks.

They’re not okay, and Boyd thinks maybe, with time, they’ll get there, or at least somewhere close to there. They fight, maybe too much, but they never leave. Leaving hurts too much, even if it’s only for a couple hours.

When Erica has a breakdown and tries to run back to Derek and Isaac, her parents, Boyd has to hold her back, fight her down. He knows what will happen, should they try to go back. The alphas are waiting for them; he can feel it in his bones. It reminds him of how his grandmother used to get sore joints before a storm, before his mother would walk in through the back door (it was always the back door). Erica doesn’t talk to him for a day after that, until Boyd comes home from helping a couple move in furniture (maybe if thing were different, someone would be helping him and Erica move into a house one day) and there’s a cake waiting for him. It looks like a pile of pink mush, but Boyd eats most of it anyway, just to see her smile. That night, they hold each other tightly and when Erica starts crying, Boyd doesn’t say anything. He just holds her and strokes her hair.

A few days later, Boyd tries to tell her they should move on, go somewhere far, far away. He packs their bags while she screams at him, calls him a dickhead who doesn’t care, who probably never did. Boyd throws a desk lamp at the wall and tells her he cares, he fucking cares, and it’s fucking terrifying. They sit in silence for a long time, until Erica inches towards him and takes his hand with both of hers, and Boyd pulls her closer to him. They never have to talk about it, after. Maybe if things were different, they would have because they had all the time in the world.

Erica comes home smelling of gunpowder one day, and Boyd has to take a walk before he punches a hole in the wall. He runs back four minutes and twenty-nine seconds later and pulls her into his arms and he doesn’t let go for six minutes and thirty-one seconds. He clings to her and she clings back (if he gets cuts on his back from her claws, he doesn’t say a thing). Neither of them leaves in the middle of a fight after that.

In the night, they are afraid, more so than during the day. Boyd clings to Erica in his sleep, grasping for safety in the nightmares she can only begin to imagine. Erica doesn’t sleep much at all, and she doesn’t mention the way Boyd clings to her as he battles the demons of his dreams, nor does she mention his claws piercing her skin as he holds onto her; if Boyd is aware of what happens every night in their bed, he doesn’t show it. 

Erica doesn’t sleep after the third night in the motel, when she wakes up to the sound of a car accident one street over and nearly has a seizure. She’s always a light sleeper, but after being tortured, even the sound of the air conditioner keeps her awake at night because there’s just  _too much– too much outside, too much inside– just too damn much_. Boyd is a heavy sleeper, but when Erica shot straight out of bed and began shaking, he was up faster than ever before. They spend two hours going through breathing exercises, and Boyd rubs her back, her arms, and her shoulders for another five hours, until Erica finally calms down. When she does, she turns around and nuzzles into his neck, muttering about her epilepsy and the night and the noises. She mentions it like it’s still happening to her, like the bite never healed it, merely hid it away from her. After the kanima, she finally realized how indestructible she  _wasn’t_. Maybe if things were different, there would be no seizures, no kanima, and they’d be going through breathing exercises for an entirely different reason.

Sometimes they watch movies, and sometimes they play around. When it rains, if they’re feeling well and happy, they run in the forest across the street and chase each other. Erica likes the chase, and Boyd likes hearing her laugh behind him as he thinks of clever places to hide. He never hides in places she can’t find him, however; the scars are too raw, too new (it doesn’t matter how many weeks, months pass; they may never be truly okay) for too much separation to be okay with them.

All good things come to an end, regardless of how “good” those things really are. It’s during a rainy day that the other shoe drops. Maybe if things were different, the other shoe would just be Derek getting pissed at them for hiding in his Camaro and making them do ridiculous training exercises. No, instead, the other shoe comes in the form of an alpha, and Erica taking too long to find Boyd, hidden in a bush only a mile away.

  

 

 

Ten minutes. Boyd waits ten minutes before he begins to panic, before he realizes she had to have known where he was. He could smell her from his position, so she should have been able to smell him from miles away. Panic sets in and fangs elongate, claws extend, and a supernatural rush of adrenaline pushes Boyd forward after that familiar smell of cheap motel shampoo and leather. Half a mile away (she was in the middle of running to me, he thinks), Erica’s scent mingles with another that he doesn’t recognize but knows, God does he know, is an alpha.

A howl, more like a roar (Boyd and Erica discuss this over the shitty motel table one day; she says  _it’s because we’re beasts,_ _not actual wolves_ ), rips through him as he chases after the scents. 

It’s only been ten minutes when he finally catches up to her, and right there, in a clearing in the forest, is the pack of alphas. Erica is being restrained by just one of them, which terrifies Boyd more than it would if it were two alphas, and the rest are watching him with those goddamned toothy grins. Two of them pounce on him, and he doesn’t even have time to fight back or even make a noise before he too is restrained.

The two alphas hold him as another, a woman with bare feet and claws that look like they are never put away, steps closer. “Good. Now let’s go see your al– oh wait, no. Technically, aren’t you two  _omegas_?” The one holding Erica laughs, while the other two just smirk. “Don’t you know that an omega never survives without a pack?” She chides, turning her back and motioning for the rest of them to follow.

They walk for an hour before they stop, and Boyd already feels resolute in his impending death. He can see Erica ahead, looking and smelling just as resolute. “Deucalion said to meet here, so don’t fucking move from this spot. I’ll go ahead and meet him.” The woman turns away, leaving just Boyd, Erica, and the three alphas guarding them.

Erica’s face is emotionless, though her posture shows defeat. He can sense her giving up, minute by minute. Boyd follows suit and tries to inch closer to her. She looks at him and smiles, and for a second, he could’ve sworn that smile was a goodbye. The alphas are mocking them, telling them about what’s going on in Beacon Hills and what’s to come for the miserable remains of the Hale pack. Boyd listens to them because there’s nothing better to do besides seek comfort in the closeness of Erica, like he’s been doing for months.

Erica, however, seems to have a different idea when thirty minutes into their boasting, she turns to him and kisses him with a ferocity that should’ve turned him on, but merely made him feel like she was preparing to do something stupid. Her lips are chapped and they’re covered in dirt, blood, and sweat; Boyd can’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be than kissing the girl before him. It terrifies him and excites him at the same time, and he mutters  _I love you, I love you, I love you_  on her lips. Maybe if things were different this wouldn’t be how he tells her that for the first time (or the last), he thinks. Nonetheless, she smiles into the kiss, and his heart thumps at the same pace as hers.

They break apart at the alpha’s demands to  _stop that, you horny bastards_ , and then she attacks. It’s enough of a surprise to both the alphas and Boyd that it works as a distraction. She screams at him to run, go to Derek,  _just fucking run_ , as she holds them off with power he knew she had but has never really witnessed before.

So he runs. He runs, runs, runs as fast as he can. He runs towards Derek, towards Isaac, towards Scott, towards the annoying fucker Stiles; he just fucking runs. But he doesn’t run home, exactly. No, home is back there, in the arms of the one person in the world who really knew him, in the arms of the girl he may never see again. 

It takes him the whole night to make it back. The journey feels like déjà vu, except this time, he’s even more alone than he was before. There is no blond running ahead of him, no reason to call out for her to  _stop, wait a damn second_.

When he finally makes it back to Beacon Hills, he follows the scent of his alpha to an apartment building. If there had been time, he would have been more curious about the move, but instead, he charges inside. Derek is already there waiting, with Isaac, Peter, Scott and Stiles. He almost feels relief until he notices who’s missing, and then his heart just hurts.

 

 

  

It ends at the warehouse (he tries not to think of Erica's excitement to go to a rave, but fails). The female alpha wears Erica’s leather jacket like a prize, and Derek loses it at the sight. It’s the first time they ever see his beta form, and it is terrifying. The battle is bloody, and Boyd has blood on his hands and flesh in his teeth. The alpha pack leaves with their tails tucked between their legs, and two dead packmates. To Boyd, it doesn’t feel like enough retribution for Erica, but maybe nothing ever will.

The Hale pack mends slowly, and Derek begins to develop into a better alpha and, eventually, a better friend. Rifts are mended, and bonds are formed between even the unlikeliest people. Derek and Scott are never quite okay with each other, but Stiles acts as the glue between them. With Stiles comes Lydia, though Jackson is nowhere to be found, but Boyd can’t quite get himself to care enough. 

Boyd is never truly okay again, but then, neither is anyone else. Lydia forces the pack to watch the Notebook with her, and Stiles glares at everyone until they comply; the small smile and wet eyes that Lydia try to hide do not go unnoticed by Boyd. Isaac has lost his badass bravado, now that he has no one to revel in it with, and sometimes Boyd catches him mid-smirk as he turns to what should’ve been Erica so they can laugh at something. Derek learns from his mistakes and opens up to them all gradually, though to Stiles more than anyone else; Boyd and Lydia share a look between themselves as they watch the two dance around each other, and from there, another bond is formed.

Boyd doesn’t heal so well as the others, but Lydia is there. The bond between them is fragile and new and perhaps will always feel that way, but it’s a comfort having someone to go visit Erica with, someone else who gets it. As they turn away from the tombstone, they link arms, and somewhere he can hear Erica’s laughter and a  _I told you that blue shirt was a winner_. 


End file.
